1) IMHO a forum that gets maybe 10-20 posts on average per day, doesn't necessarily need 13 distinct subforums. Many posts are posted in to wrong subforums, and I'm pretty sure that if some one wants to read posts relating to installation, they will search "installation...and something" rather than click on "Installation subforum". I don't know if so many categories is really helping. For example, there is "General discussion" that is supposed to not have "support questions", and to also not be off-topic, so that you can talk about Debian in general but not just anything. Firstly, why? Furthermore, many posts in there are actually Offtopic or support questions...

Even better IMO would be to adapt Discourse and have few tags. But that is arguably a question of taste. For those of you that are not familiar with it, it is an alternative to phpBB where all the posts on the forum are displayed on the first page and posting is one button away always. example here : https://meta.discourse.org/

2) Because there are so many Kali/Raspbian/other "Debian-based" support questions, and there might be issues that people here can help with, would it maybe make sense to a have separate area for those people where it is explicitly said that you are not allowed to expect similar support as for Debian, but that if you are lucky and nice about it, maybe you can get some help here.

There is no need of what you propose. Just click active topics and you will have the latest posts listed. Furthermore, every sub-forum has a link to the latest post in it.

As it is, the fora's organisation is logical. Please, do not change it. The low post rate does not justify changing anything. In the past, these fora were frequented far more than now: the decline was caused when knowledgeable ripe users felt their say was ignored and when the fora's signal to noise ratio started to deteriorate.

Post by edbarx » 2016-09-12 02:20There is no need of what you propose.----snip, no need for a full quote---

Amen, and plus 100, the post is more of a attempt at promoting "discourse", then a "logical" idea,

There is another thread, as well where "pylkko ' jumped in, trying to promote this "Discourse". At least this time the OP started a separate topic, I didn't respond, because I didn't want to derail a topic I started,..

In a way, it is "convenient", that this was started though, I spent to much timewriting a reply, but saved it as a "draft", as I said, I decided not to post becauseI did not want to derail the topic I started, but this thread would be more appropriate. To start with, This forum is a lot more then just a "blog" , it is a wealth of "history", as well as just a forum, and phpBB is very suitable, for many reasons, compared to "discourse" , and I did look, to see what it is,..turns out it really is more of just a "face book" social network, mailing list type thing. But also it is NOT a package available in the Debian packages, and phpBB3is available, it is very much logical to use a forum softwarethat is in the Debian repositories, on a forum that is on a Debian powered server, ... This forum is also on a Debian server as well,... ------------

1) IMHO a forum that gets maybe 10-20 posts on average per day

FUD , this forum gets a lot , more traffic then that, a lot if it though , is people browsingthe wealth of information it contains,

where all the posts on the forum are displayed on the first page------

That is what a pathetic "blog" is, this forum contains much , much more, pages and pages, and you are proposing :

----get rid some old ones?

Reducing it to a "blog" that fits on 1 page, just to promote and use this pathetic "discourse",... ??? ------------------ Any way, below is a copy of the "draft" I saved,...==================

by pylkko » is it somehow difficult to maintain a discourse forum? is it the php? in case you don't know what Discourse is:

I don't know on that, until now I had never heard of it. My reasons for using phpBB , is because that is the forum software I have themost experience with, also a big reason, it is in the Debian repos,:

There are many types of "forum software", and most of them I can not stand, I have all ways been comfortable with the phpBB, and since it is in the debian repos, and I prefer to keep everything using debain packages , any way, I did, look, at the 'discourse'but as far as I can tell it is not in the Debian repos, besides that, Oh, by the way , your link is not really valid, it says the page does not exist, but I did find it, and this:

Discourse is an open source Internet forum and mailing list management software application founded in 2013 by Jeff Atwood, Robin Ward, and Sam Saffron.[2] Discourse received funding from First Round Capital and Greylock Partners.[3]From a usability perspective, Discourse breaks with existing forum software by including features recently popularized by large social networks,

Well, that killed my interest, to start with, I am not interested in creating a mailing list, I kind of hate them, but also am not interested in anything that has the so called "features", recently popularized by large "social networks",...sounds to much like facebook and twitter to me,... Phpbb and also SMF , have been popular on many programming forums, and withthe code boxes, and features like that they are excellent forum software when it is necessary to be posting code and scripts. I suppose , that is one reason so many newcomers don't use the code boxes, theyhave never seen that kind of feature, have no clue as to how to use it or what it is for, and mostly have never used anything except the newer, popularized "social networks". I don't know on that. But in any way, a discussion on what forum software is best,is not really what I had in mind when I started this thread.==================================================== @pylkko I don't think this forum is a good place to be trying to promote "discourse" , it is not even available as a Debian package, and really has nothingto do with Debian

1) I suspect that the OP is well-intentioned, but a meaningful, substantive discussion on questions of categorization and classification requires some fairly specialized domain knowledge. Library schools devote at least two complete semester-long courses to covering just the technical basics.

2) Even with that domain knowledge, there is still no "one size fits all" answer. Information-seeking behavior is complex and multideterminate, affected by everything from personal preference to the imprecision of everyday language. In that sense, the only "best" solution is one that supports multiple strategies.

3) Optimal number of categories has nothing to do with inflow rate. Rather, it has to do with the overall size of the "collection." That is to say, any static collection of 500,000 items will benefit from some sort of categorization, even if no additional items are added to the collection.

4) All formal systems (including classification schemes) are inherently arbitrary and incomplete. There is no fix.

and that is just this morning, there are many "days" , or 24 hour periods, withmore then 100 new posts , ... I have not done the research to calculate the daily average, but I am prettysure it is much higher the 10 or 20.

Given that many of the subforums have posts that don't appear to belong there, I thought that a solution could be to reorganize the categories some how (as opposed to say having some one move the posts around all the time). While dasein is right that it is hard to say what the best solution is since people have difference needs etc (relativizing the point, so to speak) I don't think that has much to do with the fact that the categories as they are now do not appear to be working perfectly. That is, if the criteria is that they should for the sake of signal-to-noise contain things that they describe, then clearly a forum that says in the description "no support posts" should not have support posts in it.

But I don't want to make an issue out of a non-issue if people in general feel that the categories as is serve a purpose and that they indeed work.

Also, I think that some people feel that the signal-to-noise ratio is low because quite often people from Kali et al. come along and post a question, after which several people have to go through the ritual of telling them why Kali is not Debian etc. But, then again, I don't know if that is an issue either.

pylkko wrote:Because there are so many Kali/Raspbian/other "Debian-based" support questions, and there might be issues that people here can help with, would it maybe make sense to a have separate area for those people where it is explicitly said that you are not allowed to expect similar support as for Debian, but that if you are lucky and nice about it, maybe you can get some help here.

No.

These boards are supplied for free by some very kind people and are not covered by the usual Debian donations, AFAIK.

I think the least we can do is respect their generous investment by keeping the troubleshooting Debian-specific.

Just an opinion but, I think newbies using Kali Linux doesn't get answers to their questions on Kali forums because the developers expect users of Kali to have some experience with linux, Kali is not a linux for newbies or the average linux desktop user, Kali is for the experienced or somewhat experienced linux user, I always wonder why somebody new to linux would choose a advanced distro like Kali to start with, it always baffles me, IMHO Kali and/or Debian developers and users doesn't have time to loose trying to help somebody using Kali for other uses than for what it was created or intended for!

-----then clearly a forum that says in the description "no support posts" should not have support posts in it

Yes this is true, and that is what the "report" button is for, as well a reporting spam,a moderator will decide if it really needs to be moved. They do move quite afew posts. But also some get missed, especially when no one reports them.

eor2004 wrote:I always wonder why somebody new to linux would choose a advanced distro like Kali to start with

Because they watched the latest episode of Mr. Robot and feel über cool and h4¢k3r_L1k3 using it.

Oh, so that's why? thanks for clarifying it, so these guys think that installing Kali Linux will magically turn them into hackers overnight? IMHO that's very stupid, it is like a baby trying to walk before crawling, don't you think so?